Manning could spend over six decades of his life behind bars, but will likely one day see freedom

When you hear the words "leaker" or "whistleblower", these days you probably think of Edward Snowden. Holed up at a Moscow airport indefinitely, Mr. Snowden has defied U.S. authorities who charged him under the Espionage Act of 1917 (18 U.S.C. § 792).

At the ripe age of 30, the Mr. Snowden embodies the kind of deliberate, principled leaker we're used to -- a Daniel Ellsberg of his time. In his former role serving as a mid-level system administrator for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and then Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. (BAH) he had a great deal of privileged access and commanded a $122,000 USD. But for better or worse he threw that all away on principle, choosing to reveal to the world via two top newspapers -- The Guardian (UK) and The Washington Post -- that the NSA was spying on 99 percent of Americans' locationsvia telephone metadata.

I. Before Snowden, There was Manning

By contrast a very different leaker finds his fate today, a leaker the media had almost forgotten before the inevitable storm surrounding his verdict picked up. That leaker is Bradley Manning.

Mr. Manning's path to becoming a leaker began with his fateful decision to enlist in the U.S. Army as a Private First Class (PFC) in September 2007. He was enrolled in basic training Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. A little over 5 feet tall and openly gay in his private life, Mr. Manning was "bullied" according to fellow soldiers. Despite seeming on the verge of a breakdown, they report he did maintain an air of defiance, shouting back at drill sergeants who would eventually nickname him "General Manning".

After six weeks his commanding officers had seen enough and they sent him to a discharge unit.

PFC Manning was allegedly bullied in the armed forces for his relatively open homosexuality. [Image Source: BradleyManning.org]

The story could have ended there, but it didn't. Facing a shortage of recruits, Mr. Manning was "recycled", with the discharge reversed in January 2008. This time Mr. Manning survived the trials and tribulations of bootcamp. Mr. Manning's father was an IT administrator and he himself had toyed with web development and programming. Thus it seemed a natural fit when the Army slotted him as a high-tech intelligence analyst. He quickly received TS/SCI (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information) privileges, giving him access to a host of U.S. State Department and U.S. Military files and documents.

In 2008 he was introduced to a hacker community via a boyfriend who lived in the Boston area. But they separated by Sept. 2009, leaving him depressed. Shortly thereafter he was shipped off to Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad, arriving in Oct. 2009.

II. Nov. 2009 : When The Leaks Began

In Nov. 2009 Manning was promoted from PFC to Specialist, but he was growing disillusioned with the armed forces. He allegedly made contact with Wikileaks -- at the time a fledgling leaks site -- for the first time that month. He was allegedly befriended by site founder Julian Assange, who encouraged him to leak any incriminating material he found.

Shortly thereafter he is accused of having began downloading off SiPRNet (a military network) hundreds of thousands of memos from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as memos from the U.S. Department of State (DoS). He allegedly smuggled the data out on fake music.

Finding video footage from a camera onboard a chopper involved in an incident in which civilians -- including journalists -- wered killed, he vowed to leak the information. He allegedly passed the video to Wikileaks in Feb. 2010.

The site published it in April 2010 under the name "Collateral Murder", quickly vaulting it from a largely unknown site to one of the internet's biggest hotbeds of controversy.

III. Turned In, Charged With giving "Intelligence to the Enemy"

In May 2010, perhaps feeling conflicted about his actions, Mr. Manning reached out to a well known former hacker-turned-security research, Adrian Lamo. Talking to Mr. Lamo in a series of AOL Instant Messenger chat, Mr. Manning began to hint at his illegal actions. At that point Mr. Lamo -- an ordained "priest" and sometimes journalist -- offered to serve as Mr. Manning's confidante, protecting the information he was sharing. But according to Mr. Lamo, Mr. Manning never clearly accepted his offer.

Adrian Lamo, a former convicted hacker, made the surprising decision to turn Mr. Manning in to the feds.

Faced with a moral dilemma -- realizing the magnitude of the hordes of information Mr. Manning had indiscriminately dumped on Wikileaks -- Mr. Lamo decided that he must turn the young hacker in. Mr. Lamo would later tell us that had Mr. Manning accepted clearly his offer to serve him as a religious or journalistic confidante, he would likely have been unable to blow the whistle on the self-styled "whistleblower".

In Feb. 2013 Mr. Manning plead guilty to a number of reduced versions of charges, a common tactic in military court. In total he has pled guilty to reduced versions of ten Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charges -- each of which would have carried a 10 year maximum sentence, but in reduced form carry 2 years a piece. A judge rulled that his maximum sentence on these charges would be 16 years in prison.

The sentence today will deal with the charges he pled "Not Guilty" to -- the aiding the enemy (UCMJ 104) charge, the Theft of Gov't Property charges, and various unauthorized use (UCMJ 92) charges.

Ultimately the military court found Mr. Manning guilty of all five counts of theft of documents, but not guilty of aiding the enemy.

Manning arrives at the sentencing hearing. He was found not guilty of aiding the enemy, but guilty of numerous other charges. [Image Source: ABC News]

The theft counts each carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The six civil infractions carry a sentence of two years. And the computer fraud charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years (which apparently the government did pursue.

Thus served consecutively, Mr. Manning still faces up 90 years in prison, at least, when his prior guilty pleas are considered. That's assuming a judge assigns the sentences consecutively. Wikileaks claims on their Twitter that the maximum is 136 years, although it's unclear where that number comes from:

Manning faces 136 years on the charges he has been convicted of today. Dangerous national security extremism from the Obama administration.

Likely the sentence will fall somewhere in between -- a couple decades behind bars -- but we shall have to wait for the final sentence to see. The sentence on the charges will be given by Judge Col. Denise Lind at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.

V. Editorial: Retrospect on an Angry Young Man Who Did Open Some Eyes

At an earlier hearing Mr. Manning, pleading guilty, stated:

I believed if the public was aware of the data [cables, memos, videos], it would start a public debate of the wars. [The behavior of Americans in the chopper video] burdens me emotionally.... [And] I believed that the public release of these cables would not damage the United States, but might be embarrassing.

I think most of us can agree that Mr. Manning leaked the information at least partially out of good intent (even if all his motives weren't pure). However, he also caused very real damage to the nation he vowed to serve. And he clearly did appear to act afoul of the wording of the CFAA, Espionage Act, and UCMJ.

Personally I disagree with the "theft" chages from a technical standpoint, as I don't think you can really "steal" and electronic record (as the records are still there in SiPRNet), it does seem a fitting, if technically flawed description of Mr. Manning's actions.

At the end of the day both critics and supporters alike must remember that Mr. Manning was an angry, confused young man who thrust into a harsh wartime atmosphere against the advice of his commanding officers. Mr. Manning will celebrate his 26 birthday in December, likely behind bars, where he's celebrated the last two years as well.

The Manning story is a turbulent coming of age tale, that's hard to judge in a solely positive or negative light. [Image Source: Nieman Lab]

To me, that's where I have trouble following the whistleblower argument. Mr. Manning -- by his own words -- acted in part to "embarass" the U.S. A true whistleblower does not aim to embarass his organization, but rather to expose its wrongdoing in as plain and stark terms as possible. Mr. Manning's choice of terms -- coming from a man who allegedly suffered a great deal of bullying and was demoted while serving in Iraq -- are telling.

At best Bradley Manning was a whistleblower who looked to air troubling footage of civilians being killed in combat. At worst he was a rash and tempermental document dumper looking to "embarass" the U.S. [Image Source: Getty Images]

The fact that Mr. Manning went to Wikileaks -- a site that seeks not to spread the truth, but to almost singularly discredit the U.S. -- and digitally sojourned with its glory-seeking founder was in my opinion a major mistake. He should have persisted and found a source at a major outlet like The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Guardian. I guarantee you he would have, had he not given up so easy, taking the intellectually lazy route of a scattershot document dump.

In that regard Mr. Snowden has a much stronger case as a whistleblower, even if he faces similar charges.

In many ways Mr. Manning shares a fair deal in common with hacker groups like Anonymousand Lulzsec, whom he likely looked up to -- and who vigorously defended him. He had some legitimate reasons to be frustrated and outraged -- both personally and as a whistleblower. However, the way he went about it was childish, and the haphazard "doxxing" of sorts that he did to SiPRNet simply bored the public to death, when a more targeted series of reports could have potentially shown the light on real wrongdoing.

The internet protest campaign against the Manning trial featured pictures of people holding up signs reading "I am Bradley Manning."

This is true there's a lot of Bradley Manning in a lot of us -- and that's not all good. At his best Mr. Manning was a crusader against coverups, a brave resistor against bigotry, and a unabashed advocate of government transparency. At his worst he was childish, arrogant, tempermental, entitled, and rash -- basically everything you'd expect a 22 year old to be at times.

At the end of the day his guilty verdict is inevitable. But for better or worse there's no undoing his impact -- good or bad. What's the best/worst news for Mr. Manning? His actions will be remembered by history and analyzed in explicit detail.

He stole a bunch of documents and arbitrarily uploaded them to the Internet on an anti-American website.

This isn't a "whistleblower", not even close. And as far as his conscience? Now he has hundreds of deaths of Afghan informants that were killed on his conscience, directly because of his reckless lack of judgement. Oh but I guess the ends justified the means except...well there is no ends. He's changed NOTHING about the way our Government conducts it's affairs.

There seems to be a huge disconnect between those who feel the US foreign policy is out of control, and those who feel this sort of style of "whistleblower" activity leaves a lot to be desired.

Did he try to do the right thing? Perhaps. But like Snowden, he went about doing that in a completely unacceptable manner.

From a year after the leaks...The condemnation for the release of informant names has continued despite the fact that Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell said on August 11, “We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents.” This has been repeated despite Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ suggestion in the days after the release, “There has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak.” It has taken on a life of its own, even though the Associated Press concluded on August 17, “There is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation.

quote: But like Snowden, he went about doing that in a completely unacceptable manner.

Wow, how naive can you be? What else would you have had Snowden do that would have had any effect on the way the NSA operates other than what he did which has been extremely effective in sparking a debate in this country and even going so far as to have a law barring NSA practices narrowly defeated in the House?

quote: What else would you have had Snowden do that would have had any effect on the way the NSA operates other than what he did which has been extremely effective in sparking a debate in this country and even going so far as to have a law barring NSA practices narrowly defeated in the House?

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was Snowdens responsibility to tour Communist countries (which have WAY worst track records than us in this area), give them secret US info, in order to somehow make the NSA stop.

Please tell me how stealing a USB drive from the NSA and giving it to the Chinese, to save his own neck, was about protecting the American public? Really, I want to know.

quote: Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was Snowdens responsibility to tour Communist countries (which have WAY worst track records than us in this area), give them secret US info, in order to somehow make the NSA stop.

That's a classic example of a red herring. His options were to:

a) Release the information to the press and flee (seeking refuge from an obviously corrupt government more worried about punishing him for releasing the information about the crimes than the crimes themselves) causing the biggest effect.

b) Release the information and stay (and get life in prison as a result).

c) Try to affect change through proper channels (ie. you're out of your mind if you think he would have accomplished anything other than being demoted/fired/prosecuted/shunned).

You're the one with the childlike view when you act as if b or c were logical choices given how corrupt our government is.

In the real world, sometimes you can't win on your own. And sometimes doing the right thing, still means it ends badly for you.

This guy took an oath. Remember? One that came with punishments on breaking, that he knowingly agreed to. What do you want from me?

I'm not saying I don't appreciate his convictions. But I draw the line at betraying your country to save your own neck. And coming up with ridiculous Hollywood-movie scenarios that the Government was going to try and kill him. I mean lmao, just come on. Last time I checked Manning was still alive, and he didn't run to China or Russia.

p.s this topic is a great opportunity to bash Obama, but I don't compromise my beliefs to play partisan politics, even though I'm accused of doing so.

quote: And coming up with ridiculous Hollywood-movie scenarios that the Government was going to try and kill him. I mean lmao, just come on

Who are you responding to here?

quote: This guy took an oath. Remember?

He was a private contractor, but that's beside the point. The oath that trumps all oaths is the one to protect the constitution, which the government he blew the whistle on is trampling all over.

Is this even a real conversation? Are you really trying to say "he took an oath" actually means anything when the government is as corrupt as ours? That's got to be the lamest crutch anyone's ever used to try to win an argument.

Oaths? Who are you kidding, this country was founded by "traitors".

quote: I'm not saying I don't appreciate his convictions. But I draw the line at betraying your country to save your own neck

Really??? Given how the whistleblowers have been treated lately, and given what the governemnts been doing behind close doors, who exactly is betraying who here?

This is such a surreal conversation. Come back from the twilight zone man.

Uhhh, that's not a red herring, if anything your use of "oaths" was. Me debunking the notion is not.

quote: Whenever anyone has a problem with something happening in this country, they should just run to another country and betray us. That will show em!!

His whistleblowing and his refuge seeking are two separate things. Your desperation to conflate them into some sort of great mastermind betrayal is tiresome. If i unmask government corruption, then run to another country to avoid certain retaliation from said government...well, in 'merica we'd call a person like that a hero if they were seeking refuge from one of our adversaries. But of course, double standards abound with your logic.

quote: I just reject this absurd notion that because our Government is corrupt, he had no choice but to run to China and give them secret information....And you know what? I DO believe there are still people here in America that could have helped him make a difference! There were options available to him that he didn't take.

So noble, brings a tear to my eye... Oh wait, i should start researching articles on whistleblower prosecutions during the last ten years. That'll dry that tear right up.

if you're soft, don't join the military. We are called the uniformed service for a reason. Doing whatever the hell you want because you feel a certain way is an undisciplined fool that lacks the foresight of endangering countless others risking their lives to accomplish a mission.